We filled our bags with lychee and oranges, the only cheap foods we didn’t need to cook. Then we split our gold between all three of our bags, with smaller satchels sewed into our undershirts and hats, loose coins tied into my braids and stuffed into our socks so that even if someone robbed us, they wouldn’t leave us with nothing. Yufei had suggested swallowing some of the coins whole for safekeeping, but Wenshu had shot her such a horrified look that I’d laughed and insisted she was joking before he could start yelling.
Wenshu had, unsurprisingly, ranked eleventh out of all the scholars in Lingnan, the southernmost district. Yufei had just made the cut at rank number forty-six, even though her raw score probably would have disqualified her if she’d tested in the North, but there weren’t many southern candidates who knew the Northern dialect well enough for the speaking exams they would face in Chang’an. When they’d checked the list of alchemists, they’d found my name second on the list. Not hùnxiě, but Fan Zilan.
I’d run back to see it for myself, and sure enough, my flowery servant name had been written next to the number two. Part of me had been convinced it was someone else, but for once I was grateful for my name destined for nothingness, because at least it was unique. I thought of all the men who hadn’t passed, their burning shame when they told their parents they’d failed, their lifetime of expensive classes worth nothing at all. They’d thought I was just a joke when they’d seen me, but none of them were laughing now. For a brief, brilliant moment, I allowed myself to imagine life in Chang’an as a royal alchemist, able to practice alchemy without fear.
But that dream was still half a world away. After telling Auntie and Uncle, we started planning for our move in earnest.
The first chunk of our savings bought us two horses named Kumquat and Turmoil, who both seemed suspiciously old, but the merchant swore up and down that they could make it to Chang’an. We could have walked there in a month and a half, but our second-round exams were in four weeks, and horses could take us there in three if we were lucky. We had a hasty riding lesson that resulted in all three of us falling into water troughs and hay bales, but once we all could cling to the saddle long enough to make it up and down the street, the merchant took our money and waved us off.
I transformed my hairpins into three copper rings and slipped them onto my index, middle, and ring fingers. That way, I could transform most materials just by touch, without fishing a stone from my bag. I knew our journey would be long and potentially dangerous, and I didn’t want to be helpless if someone cut the strings to my satchel and my stones scattered across the road.
Two days after the exam, we said goodbye to Uncle and Auntie, who crammed our bags full of even more fruit and a few strips of smoked sea snake.
“You bought that?” I said, backing away as Auntie So tried to shove it into my bag. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten meat. We’d given Auntie and Uncle enough money to last them a few months, but hadn’t intended for them to use it on us.
“You can’t ride to Chang’an eating only oranges,” Auntie So said, grabbing my bag and yanking me toward her, then shoving bananas out of the way to cram the paper-wrapped snake into the top. “You’ll fall off your horses before you make it out of Guangdong.”
Uncle Fan slipped me a dagger when Auntie So wasn’t looking. “A girl needs one of these,” he said.
“Don’t worry, Baba. Wenshu will be with us,” I said.
Uncle Fan raised an eyebrow, glancing at Wenshu pulling Yufei’s hair to stop her from taking his bananas, loose soap beans spilling from his bag out into the road.
“Yufei will be with us,” I amended.
Uncle Fan stifled a cough, closing my hand around the dagger.
Yufei and I managed to settle ourselves on Kumquat’s saddle, while Wenshu sat on Turmoil. I wrapped my arms around Yufei as she grabbed the reins, then looked over my shoulder at Auntie and Uncle standing before the store. I’d never really noticed how small they were until I saw them huddled in the shade of the awning, leaning into each other. I had a sinking feeling that I would never see them again—they were old and sick, after all. What if they died while we were gone? I wouldn’t be around to resurrect them. I knew that the five of us couldn’t keep living on broth, that my resurrections alone weren’t enough to keep up with how fast gold was losing its value, that they wouldn’t survive the journey to the North with us, and a thousand other reasons we had to go. It was a logical choice, an investment in all our futures, the smart thing to do.
But Uncle Fan’s eyes misted over and he held Auntie So’s hand as he waved goodbye, and some cruel part of my brain whispered, Remember this, Zilan. This is the last memory you’ll ever have of them.
I wanted to go back, but the horse lurched forward and I clung to Yufei to avoid falling off, and after that I couldn’t bring myself to turn around until we passed the city walls.
We’d ventured east toward Huizhou as children to trade along the river, but we’d never gone north into Qingyuan. Beyond the city walls, there was little more than farmland and open sky. We passed through deep valleys of young sugarcane, its leaves waxy and green and lush, the air tinged with sweetness. Cicadas chirped in the grass, flies swarming around our horses. I’d never before seen so much open land, like the whole world was a scroll unfurling into forever.
“I’m going to throw up if you keep squeezing my stomach like that,” Yufei said.
I loosened my grip probably less than she would have liked, but I didn’t want to slide face-first into the prickly sugarcane. Kumquat started trotting faster downhill and I grabbed Yufei’s shoulders for support.
“How much farther for today?” I called to Wenshu, who looked only marginally more dignified than me and Yufei because he had more space in the saddle, though he still clutched the reins with stiff hands.
“We should at least ride until sunset,” he said. “Do you hate Kumquat that much?”
“Shut up,” I said. I knew he’d seen me flinch away from the horse’s gigantic black eyes before the merchant helped me into the saddle. I remembered my mother riding horses along the shore when I was a child, her hair loose, smiling while my father and I swam in the sea. I wanted to be as graceful as her, but something about horses unnerved me. Their big eyes were such a cavernous, glossy black. Their hoofbeats made the whole earth tremble, rattling my bones.
“I can’t believe you’re fine with dead bodies but don’t like horses,” Wenshu said.
“They’re just so large,” I said. “Like trees, but they can run toward you.”
“Now you know how people feel when they stand next to you.”
I would have thrown something at Wenshu if I hadn’t been hanging on for dear life.
Once we’d traveled for several hours without falling off, we picked up the pace a bit, because according to Wenshu, If we were going to go this slowly, we might as well have paid for donkeys.
We reached a town in northern Qingyuan just as the sun was setting. It wasn’t nearly as far as we needed to go, but our legs were sore from riding and we all practically fell off our horses.
People called Qingyuan the gate to the wilds of Yuebei. The south of Qingyuan, where we’d come from, was mostly trading villages. But to the north of Qingyuan, we’d pass through towering bamboo forests, sloping mountains, rice plantations, and wild bananas trees.
We walked our horses to the closest inn and tied them up. When we ventured farther into the farmlands, we would likely have to sleep outside, but it wasn’t safe to do that so close to a city. Our throats would be cut in our sleep, our gold stolen. If we could just make it north to the Cháng River, we could follow the postal route straight to Chang’an.
I couldn’t help but wince as Wenshu handed over our gold coins to the innkeeper. After hoarding gold for years, spending so much of it at once felt wrong.
A night at the inn apparently came with a bowl of porridge. We weren’t quick to turn down hot food, so we stumbled into a pub so loud that it made my head throb, men’s voices far too boisterous and cheerful for so late in the day. Wenshu pointed me and Yufei to a bench in the corner and handed us each a bowl.
At the bar, a pair of scholar alchemists were practicing party tricks, turning beer into blocks of ice. The innkeeper laughed uneasily and gave them new drinks on the house. Wealthy men like them could use their alchemy to charm free food and gifts from merchants, partially out of reverence and partially out of fear. It was a dangerous game to show off alchemy with so many desperate for life gold, but few would bother the sons of aristocrats and risk imprisonment.
As a merchant alchemist, I had no such protections. I’d heard of other lower-class alchemists who woke up shackled in dark rooms, tortured or starved until they made life gold, even if they didn’t know how. The punishment for kidnapping a commoner was only forty lashes with a light stick, a low price for an aristocrat to pay in exchange for eternal life.
A group of men in cyan robes drank rice wine across from us—probably the local magistrate and his right-hand men, based on the color of their clothes and the way their skin sparkled with gold flecks. I shoveled soup that tasted like dust into my mouth and willed myself not to fall asleep sitting up.
I was stirring the slurry in my soup together when feet stopped in front of our bench. Wooden shoes that curled up at the tip, gold designs carved into the sides.
“What lovely wives,” a man said.
Wenshu choked on his soup. For a moment, his expression was so pained that I thought he actually might vomit it back into his bowl, but he swallowed it down and shook his head. “Sisters, sir,” he said. Then elbowed us and we ducked our heads in a bow.
“Oh, unmarried, then?” the magistrate said, sliding onto the bench next to me. I wanted to recoil, but Wenshu left me no room to move. The man smelled like wine and sweat. He must have been close to Uncle Fan’s age. Yufei clutched her spoon like she fully intended to scoop the man’s eyes out, but I was too tired to conjure any anger right now and dropped my gaze back to my soup.
“How much for the pretty one?” the man said.
I didn’t need to look up to know that he meant Yufei. She moved to stand and most likely pour her soup over his head, but Wenshu grabbed her wrist.
“They’re not for sale,” Wenshu said, somehow managing to sound polite. He could have been a court actor in another life.
The man sighed. “The hùnxiě, at least?”
I stifled a sigh. I would have preferred “the ugly one” or “the tall one.” Yufei moved again, but Wenshu tightened his grip around her wrist.
“We have business up north,” Wenshu said evenly. “They need to work for me for a few more years before they can marry.”
It was a vague enough response that it might stand a chance at appeasing the man, if he was decent and honorable.
The smile dropped off his face. His gaze slid across the three of us, gold flecks glittering in his irises, his lip curled.
“I see,” he said, turning without another word. He said something to his companions, and soon their conversations died down and they left the pub. We returned our bowls in stony silence and headed up to our room. Wenshu didn’t even complain about not having water to bathe, which truly spoke to how exhausted he was. We were all shivering, so I fished out some firestones and made a small flame in the hearth, jabbing it with a fire poker. The bright flames reminded me of Uncle Fan’s kilns, but I swallowed down my tears before Wenshu or Yufei could see them.
The room had only one bed, so Yufei tugged me onto it beside her and wrapped her arms around me like an octopus. Wenshu curled up on the floor beside us.
The two of them dropped off to sleep quickly, but even though my whole body felt like it was covered in heavy clay, I couldn’t fall asleep. Moonlight spilled across my face from a tear in the paper window and scorched away any hope of slumber, yet I couldn’t bring myself to move away from it. It took me a while to realize that it was too quiet. The only sounds in the room were the passing footsteps of night guards and the distant hum of cicadas in the fields.
I sat up, rubbing my eyes, wiping away the haze of half sleep.
My cousins were motionless beside me, completely silent.
They weren’t breathing.
They lay still as corpses, dust settling on their white, waxy skin, blankets unmoving.
I seized Yufei by the shoulders and shook her. She was still so limp and warm. Dead bodies quickly grew stiff, unable to bend at the joints.
She sucked in a sharp breath and slapped my hands away, driving a foot into my ribs.
“What are you doing?” she said, shoving me back when I reached for her pulse. Beside her, Wenshu stirred, rolling over and cracking open one eye.
“Why are you making noise when it’s still dark?” he said.
“I just thought...” I hesitated, unnerved by their glares. I knew they were only exhausted and irritated to be awoken in the middle of the night, but their anger was so rarely pointed at me.
“Bad dream?” Yufei said, her gaze softening.
I nodded because that seemed the easiest answer.
Yufei leaned over me and yanked Wenshu up unceremoniously. He folded over the bed, grumbling in protest as she manhandled him under the blanket, sandwiching me between them. He swore under his breath but flopped over onto his stomach obediently. Yufei curled up around me, and then both of them were warm beside me, chests rising and falling, like when we were children, all small enough to share the same bed. They fell asleep again quickly, and this time I was the one lying stiff as a corpse.
This happened every now and then, ever since I’d woke them up three years ago.
When I was sure they were sleeping, I sat up against the wall. The moonlight fell through the paper windows, lighting up the pale white scars on the back of their necks that spelled out their names:
範 範
文 雨
書 霏
When I was thirteen, my cousins had started bleeding from their eyes. Yufei fell down while carrying eggs and twitched like her bones were trying to break free from her skin, foaming at the mouth, thrashing on top of the eggshells. Wenshu coughed up black blood and screamed and cried that his organs were melting. The healer said it was because they’d played in the tall grass, where the grass demons hid.
Then why not Zilan? Auntie So had said. She goes everywhere with them. But the healer had no answer. I always wondered if Auntie So truly wanted to understand what had caused their illness, or if she wished it had been me instead.
Uncle Fan had busied himself making lots of míngqì to bury them with—soft baby lambs and tiny ponies and wise teachers. They will be well taken care of, where they’re going, he’d said. My cousins grew smaller and smaller, skin tight across their bones, somehow looking younger even though their faces were wrinkled from thirst.
My aunt prayed, but I didn’t bother. If praying could save lives, then my mother wouldn’t be dead. Hadn’t my aunt prayed for her sister before she’d died? Didn’t she know by now that prayers were useless?
My cousins stopped breathing as the sun fell. I sat on the floor between them and didn’t tell my Auntie or Uncle because they were too busy praying and carving and doing things that didn’t help, didn’t matter, didn’t change anything at all.
My cousins went cold and stiff as clay, like they were turning into the míngqì on the shelves, and I was alone again. When I was eleven and my mother had died, I’d cried because I’d thought that was the worst pain I would ever feel. But this was like baking in one of Auntie’s dragon kilns, my lungs filled with fire, organs cooked and skin scorched off.
I bit the side of my hand to stop from crying, because if Auntie and Uncle heard me, they’d send their bodies off to the coroner and I’d never see them again. I tasted blood but only bit down harder, scarlet painting my chin and neck.
The floorboards creaked in the hallway. I froze, my pulse hammering through the wound in my palm, but after a moment, the footsteps moved past and a door closed at the other end of the house.
I had to do it now, or I’d never have a chance again.
I threw open the chest at the foot of the bed, blood splattering over all my notes, all my stones. I’d already resurrected mice and pigs and pangolins. If that worked, then why not this?
I put three bloodstones in each hand and took Yufei’s cold palm in my left and Wenshu’s in my right, my blood running down their wrists.
A hot breeze rolled by and my father’s notes spun across the room, fluttering down in front of me.
You cannot create good without also creating evil, they said.
I didn’t care.
Let all the evil in the world sink its teeth into me. Turn every clear river to sour blood, scorch every forest, hammer every mountain peak into the ground, take every piece of goodness left in this crooked world and give it to my cousins, and we’d figure out what to do about the rest. All I needed was them, even if there was no world left for us.
I clawed apart the darkness to bring them back from the river and carved their names into their spines with an old knife, and when the sun rose, there were three of us once more.
It didn’t matter then what the cost was, or when I would pay it. In the years since, sometimes I’d forget that there was any cost at all. But then I would wake up and my cousins’ eyes would be white and frosted, their bodies still, like their souls had once again crossed the river and had to be called back. They told me they didn’t feel dead, that they didn’t even feel sick anymore, that I’d saved them and didn’t need to worry. Whatever the cost is, it can’t be worse than death, Wenshu had said, and never wanted to bring it up again. But while Wenshu knew more about literature than me, he didn’t understand alchemy or its intractable laws. Nothing this important could be free.
At last, I couldn’t fight my exhaustion anymore, and I fell asleep to the sound of my cousins’ breaths.
I woke to my teeth slamming into the floor.
I jolted awake, my hands scrambling for purchase, my mouth filled with blood. Hot fingers latched onto my hair and dragged me back.
Wenshu was facedown on the floor, a man in a cyan robe jamming a knee into his back. Yufei was spilled halfway over a table, another man yanking her across it by her hair.
The man from the pub loomed in the doorway, his arms crossed, gold flecks in his skin sparkling in the pale sheet of moonlight bleeding through the window.
Of course he came for us, I thought. What rich men couldn’t buy, they took.
I clamped my hand around the wrist above me, releasing the tension on my hair, and drove my elbow backward. A man huffed out a surprised sound of pain—surely he thought a woman would scream and cry and fall limp like a wet flower. I didn’t give him a chance to recover, grabbing him by the beard and yanking his face down to my level. I clapped my hands over his eyes, my copper rings heating up, and transformed the gold flecks in his eyes into needles, skewering his irises. He screamed and stumbled away, hands clapped over his eyes, bloody tears pouring past his fingers.
Yufei had already rolled to her feet and jammed the heel of her palm into the other man’s nose with a crunching sound and a burst of blood down his face. The man collapsed against the wall and probably would have given up at that point, but Yufei stomped on his hand and then his groin.
I whirled toward Wenshu, who was still struggling to get up while another man crushed his face to the floor. My copper rings had burned up in my last transformation, so I snatched my satchel and tightened the rope, slamming it into the side of the man’s head.
He fell off Wenshu, tripping over the table and onto Yufei, who kicked him under the chin. I heard Wenshu groaning but getting up behind me, probably panicking at all the blood on the floor.
The magistrate stood in the doorway, his face white and eyes wide.
“What kind of demons are you?” he said, his voice trembling as he took a step back.
“I thought you wanted us as brides?” I said, cuffing the blood from my face.
Before the magistrate could answer, his gaze settled on something behind me. I didn’t have time to turn before Wenshu shoved past me and gouged the magistrate with the fire poker, spearing him into the wall. He gasped and clutched at the wound, blood gurgling past his lips.
“I said they’re not for sale, asshole,” Wenshu said, spitting at his feet.
As the man slumped to the floor and fell silent, we looked around at the ruined room—table overturned, walls splashed with blood.
Wenshu inhaled a shaky breath, pulling his hair from his eyes. “We need to go,” he said.
We crammed our possessions back into our bags, abandoning a few bloodstained bananas, and hurried out into the night.
Is this what the rest of our journey will be like? I thought. It seemed that fate frowned on those who ventured too far from home.
We managed to climb back on our horses and headed out into the quiet night unnoticed. Once my heart stopped thundering in my chest, I felt shaky and sick. I pressed my cheek to Yufei’s shoulder, hugging her from behind, and this time she didn’t complain. We rode out into the wilds of Yuebei as the sun rose bright red over the fields of sugarcane, toward a world that would do anything to keep us away.